“Oh God,” Earnest whined nasally. “It’s Ron Gabriel.”
Gabriel skidded to a halt in front of the director. They were almost equal in height, much to Earnest’s surprise.
“You’re Mitch Westerly,” Gabriel panted.
“And you’re Ron Gabriel” He grinned and took Gabriel’s offered hand.
“I’ve been a fan of yours,” Gabriel said, “ever since ‘The Reawakening.’ Best damned piece of tape I ever saw.”
Westerly immediately liked the writer. “Well, thanks.”
“Everything else you’ve made since then has been crap.”
Westerly liked him even more. “You’re damn right,” he admitted.
“How the hell they ever gave you an Oscar for that abortion two years ago is beyond me.”
Westerly shrugged, suddenly carefree because there were no pretenses to maintain. “Money and politics, man. You know the game. Same thing goes for writers’ awards.”
Gabriel made a face that was halfway between rue and embarrassment Then he grinned. “Yeah. Guess so.”
Earnest said, “I’m taking Mr. Westerly on a tour of the studio facilities…”
“Go pound sand up your ass,” Gabriel said. “I’ve gotta talk about the scripts.” He grabbed at Westerly’s arm. “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer or something.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Great Neither do I.” They started off together, leaving Earnest standing there. Behind his beard, his face was redder than a Mounties jacket at sunset.
The studio cafeteria was murky with pot smoke, since smoking of all sorts was forbidden on the sets because of the fire hazard.
“Now let me get this straight,” Westerly was saying. “The original scripts were written by high school kids as part of a contest?”
They were sitting at a corner table, near the air conditioning blowers, sipping gingerales.
Gabriel nodded slowly. “I’ve been working since summer with Brenda and Bill Oxnard to make some sense out of them. I’ve also written two original scripts of my own.”
“And that’s all we’ve got to shoot with?”
“That’s right.”
“Krishna’s left eyebrow!”
“Huh?”
Westerly waved at the encroaching smoke. “Nothing. But it’s a helluva situation.”
“They didn’t tell you about the scripts?”
“Earnest said there were some problems with you… you’re supposed to be tough to get along with.”
“I am,” Gabriel admitted, “when I’m being shat on.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Gabriel hunched forward in his chair. “So what do we do?”
With a small shrug, Westerly said, “I’ll have to talk to Fad about it… it’s the Executive Producer’s job…”
Gabriel shook his head. “Sheldon split. Went back to L.A. as soon as his girl moved out of his apartment, and turned over the E.P. title to Earnest.”
“Earnest?” Westerly felt his lip curling.
“The boll weevil of the north,” said Gabriel.
“Well,” with a deep sigh, “I guess I’ll have to mention it to Finger. I’m supposed to have a conference with him tonight…”
“I thought he was back in L.A.”
“He is. We’re talking by phone. Private link… satellite relay, they tell me.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll just tell Finger we have to get better script material.”
“You can read the scripts, if you want to.”
“I already saw a couple. I thought they were rejects. I’d like to see yours. At least we’ll have a couple to start with.”
Gabriel looked pleased, but still uncertain.
“Is there anything else?” Westerly asked.
With a grimace, Gabriel said, “Well, I hate to bring it up.”
“Go on.”
For an instant, the writer hesitated. Then, like a man who’s decided to step off the high board no matter what, “You’ve got a reputation for being an acid freak. Did they bring you in here just for the name or are you gonna stay straight and do the kind of work you’re capable of doing?”
So there it is, right out in the open. Westerly almost felt relieved. “Both,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Finger and Earnest called me back from the Roof of the World because I have a big name with the public and I need money so bad that I’m willing to work cheap. They know I’ve blown my head off; I doubt that they care.”
Gabriel gritted his teeth but said nothing.
“But I care,” Westerly went on. “I finally got off the stuff in Nepal and I want to stay off it. I want to do a good job on this series. I want to get back to work again.”
“No shit?”
“No shit, buddy.”
“You’re not kidding me? Or yourself?”
“No kidding.”
Gabriel broke into a grin. “Okay, buhbie. We’ll show the whole world.”
By the time Westerly got back to the studio, the quiet little knot of technicians who had been working on the aerial rigging had turned into a studio full of shouting, milling people. One of the men was hanging suspended in the rig, wires disappearing up into the shadows of the high ceiling, his feet dangilng a good ten meters off the floor.
Gregory Earnest seemed to rise up out of the floorboards as Westerly stood near the studio’s main door, watching.
“That’s Francois Dulaq, our star,” Earnest explained, pointing to the dangling man. “We’re getting him accustomed to the zero-gravity simulator.”
“Shouldn’t we use a stuntman? It looks kind of dangerous…”
Earnest shook his head. “We don’t have any stuntmen on the budget. Besides, Dulaq’s a trained athlete… strong as an ox.”
Dulaq hung in midair, shouting at the men below him. To Westerly, there was a faint tinge of terror in the man’s voice. Someone yelled from off in the distance, “Okay, try it!” Dulaq’s body jerked into motion. The rig started moving him across the vast emptiness of the studio’s open central area.
“Hold it!” the voice yelled; the rig halted so abruptly that Dulaq was almost thrown out of his skin. Westerly could feel his own eyeballs slam against his lids, in psychic communion with the man in the rig.
“Shouldn’t we test the rig with a dummy first?” he asked Earnest.
For the second time that day the executive smiled. “What do you think we’ve got up there now?”
It was agonizing to watch. The technicians spent hours setting up the lights and whisking Dulaq backward and forward through the spacious studio on the aerial rig. They slammed him against walls, amidst frantic yells of “Slow it down!” or “Watch it!” Once the rig seemed to slip and Dulaq went hurtling to the floor, only to be snatched up again and yanked almost out of sight, into the shadows up near the ceiling. From the far corner where the technicians manipulated the controls came the sounds of multilingual swearing. And from the rigging itself came shrieks and groans.
Finally, the star of the show went gracefully swooping past Westerly, smiling manfully, as a trio of tiny unattended cameras automatically tracked him from the floor, like radar-directed antiaircraft guns getting a bead on an intruding attack plane. The technicians were clustered around the controls and watched their monitor screens.
“Beautiful!” somebody shouted.
Meanwhile, Dulaq had traversed the length of the studio, still smiling, sailing like Superman through thin air and rode headfirst into the upper backwall of the starship bridge set.
Westerly heard a concussive thunk! The backwall tottered for a moment as Dulaq hung there, suddenly as stiff and wooden as a battering ram. Then the wall tumbled, taking most of the set apart with a series of splintering crashes. Amidst the flying dust and crashing two-by-threes, and all the rending, shrieking noises, Westerly clearly heard the same master technician shout out, “Hold it!”